


shine like the saved.

by rarelypoetic



Series: stream of consciousness [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: 11.18 coda, Coda, Dean loves cas so much help, Dean's emo inner monologue, Episode: s11e18 Hell's Angel, Gen, M/M, POV Second Person, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 20:37:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6486574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rarelypoetic/pseuds/rarelypoetic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean tries to get Cas back and fails and hates himself all the more for it. Based on last night's ep. Not necessary to read the other two parts of the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shine like the saved.

_Dean_?

When he says your name, you crack wide open like a poached egg split right down the middle, spilling your soft insides all over yourself. And you’re sure that everyone must be watching you bleed, but it almost doesn’t matter because his face is soft and pliant for the space of a breath, his eyes like beaming lodestars that you want to follow all of the way home. 

You don’t have the wherewithal to tell him the full truth; not here, not now, in front of everyone apart from God, so you approach from a different angle. You feel Sam’s eyes like hot pokers on the back of your neck, and you want to turn around and snap at him, _what? What? Don’t make me say it. You know. You know. You know why I have to do this._ Because of course he knows. Isn’t it plain on your face? Aren’t your soft, liquid eyes a blaring neon sign screaming to him, to everyone, _I love him I love him IlovehimIlovehimIlovehim._

You tell him to listen to you. You tell him that you don’t have a lot of time. You start to tell him what he has to do, start to tell him that he has to be brace himself to expel the archangel burning like a collapsing star inside of him before it’s too late - before the supernova of Lucifer’s grace becomes a black hole and consumes him entirely - but the words don’t make it past their infancy.

You know the exact moment he leaves you - when his eyes go hollow and far away and suddenly you’re looking at an entirely different breed of animal, and you never got to tell him - it doesn’t matter. 

What would it have accomplished anyway? Cas saw you for those few brief seconds, and you can’t say there was any piece of him that wanted to be free of Lucifer’s chains. More than anything, that _aches_. You do not know how to reconcile the yawning pit in your chest with the knowledge that there is no part of Cas left that wants to come home to you. Maybe there was once. Maybe Cas once wanted to make a life in the bunker with you just as much as you still want to with him. 

Maybe, maybe not. 

But the Castiel that wanted those things must be gone. That any part of the old him still remains is inconceivable. And yet still there is that cruel infinitesimal inkling of hope in your heart, the thing that has always kept you going despite all odds. You wish more than anything that you could extinguish it, but when you try it only spreads like a rorschach pattern on blank parchment, staining your insides with indecipherable patterns, amorphous dreams, vaguely sketched yearnings. 

_Family,_ you tell Sam. Cas is family. You say, _let’s bring him home._ What you don’t say aloud is no less the truth: for decades all you have ever done is survive, but if you fail now, if you fail to bring him home, this will be the thing that finally kills you for good.

**Author's Note:**

> re: last night's ep: ouch.
> 
> this probably makes no sense bc i'm running on 3 hours of sleep lmao
> 
> title taken from Holy Ropes by photocomfort


End file.
